John Le Fever Editorial

                                         I Never Called Him Herman

     Sunday night, under a bright half-moon, I drove back up Route 28 after paying my last respects to Herman Schroder. 
      I never called him Herman.  It would have been something like calling my grandfather Ralph.  Most people, I think, have  a "second home" when they're growing up, and "Mr. and Mrs. Schroder" were in charge of mine. 
     It was a modest frame house  tucked among other frame houses on Wrentham Street.  Nothing special to look at.  Nothing special about Wrentham Street.  My memories of it are like the movies from the 30's and 40's about the kid next door. 
   Still, that was where my buddy Bill lived, and his brothers Dave and Don.  And just incidentally, their parents.  For us, at that age, parents were an unavoidable phenomenon; they came with the house, like the water pipes.  And Bill's father's name was Herman, and he called his wife Gert, and when they were around, it was always a little quieter than when they weren't. 
     Herman was a mechanic, and a good-enough one to be put in charge of a fleet of trucks at a Kingston company.  He was in charge of the fleet for as long as I can remember-----until last Friday.  He died on the job. 
     In fact, he had just gotten a broken-down truck running near Newburgh when, on the way back, he had a heart attack on the Thruway.
     Mrs. Schroder was a nurse.  And she worked as a nurse, also for as long as I can remember.  Often one of the problems with visiting Bill in the morning was that his mother had just spent the night at the hospital and was trying to get some sleep.  It was always clear to us that if we woke her up, we'd be sure to hear about it.
     In those days on Saturday morning, we didn't bother to use the phone.  We'd just go to the friend's house, stand near the back door and call, "Hey, Bill."   But if Mrs. Schroder wasn't moving around in the kitchen, "Hey, Bill" was delivered softly three or four times near a window. 
     Although we kids always knew who was in charge there, we weren't  afraid of that authority.  There was nothing to run from, unless there was a clear-cut case of criminal negligence, such as a broken window.  Then we all knew that when Herman got home, seeking peace, somebody was going to catch something that would make hell seem like a vacation.
     But the central tone of the place was a warm sense of humor, a kind of wry tolerance of the human condition.  In fact, with Herman, I had to watch out that he didn't catch me up in a joke of some kind. A bit like sending the new man out for left-handed pliers.  And not just me---the sons had to watch out even more.
     When Bill and I were 13 we caught the motor craze.  Thirteen, the age when, with three years to go before the driver's test, time ground to a halt and refused to budge.
     So with some help from Warren Hummer, a young man who had just survived 30-some missions over Germany as a B-17 belly gunner, Bill and I put together my first vehicle---a four-wheeled wobbler driven by a rebuilt Briggs and Stratton 2 1/2 horsepower engine that had gotten tired a little earlier and fallen off a garden tractor.  I paid $20 for it.
     The rig's axles were mounted on wooden four-by-fours, it had a real steering wheel, it was belt-driven with a clutch made of angle iron and a pulley, and it had a hand brake.  It also had a clumsy wooden body and it could attain speeds of up to 15 miles an hour.
    One day Herman came home from work and gave it an appraising eye.  "Pretty good,"  he said.  "But it sure won't carry both of you."  It was clear Bill and his father had to build one. 
    Herman couldn't afford to buy a motor (this was 1946).  But in his basement he had saved an old washing machine powered by a gasoline engine that could produce 1 3/4 horsepower if the weather was clear. 
     Bill complained he wouldn't be able to keep up with me. There's a large difference between 1 3/4 horsepower and 2 1/2.  Herman told him to keep his shirt on.
    Well, when they lifted it out of the basement, it was a sleek article indeed.  It was 30 pounds lighter than mine because its body consisted of three trim and springy boards of hard oak that would bend but not break.  Natural suspension, as compared to my un-natural lack of it.
     It was similar in other ways except that Herman had figured the size of the drive pulleys so that Bill's rig crept by mine at 15 1/2 miles an hour.  We used to hurtle around the armory, and I always had to keep Bill on the outside to win.
     Sunday night I said good-bye to Herman Schroder---that is, the mortal coil he left behind.  It didn't look like Herman, and since it lacked his animation, it wasn't really him at all.  He would have liked the half moon shining.